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Friday, March 29, 2013

The Justly Condemned

Today is Good Friday, the day on
which we recall more vividly than usual the suffering of Christ. With Passion Walks, Living Stations, and
re-runs of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” we reflect upon Jesus’
agony in the Garden, His unjust death sentence, and His tortuous walk up
Calvary.My day today was not very
different from that of most other Catholics; I found myself at a reenactment of
Jesus’ trial, walk to Golgotha, and Crucifixion, and then at the usual 3:00pm
service.However, today, unlike other
Good Fridays before, I found myself mediating continually upon one specific
part of the Passion:Jesus’ Condemnation
to death.

When I hear of the First Station,
I typically hear of it from two different viewpoints.The first is that of compassion, or
pity.I read about Jesus, the innocent
man condemned to death.Jesus, the meek
Lamb being led to an underserved slaughter.The second is that of guilt, the mentality that whispers, “It is I who
should have died, not Him.”Today, I
began with a bit of both. I imagined
myself looking at Jesus as I peered at the actor who played Him, and was disturbed
at the thought of an innocent Man
being condemned (aren’t we always?).Then
I transitioned into the common second, and was simultaneously horrified and
touched at the thought that He took this condemnation from and for me.

But then, ever so suddenly and ever so subtly,
the scene in my mind shifted, and instead of me looking at Jesus, it was He Who
was looking at me.

It was a slight shift, but at the
same time a very large one.No longer
was I looking at Jesus, the innocent Man.Nor was I looking upon myself, and feeling the guilt. No longer was it me doing the looking and the
thinking; it was Jesus.Instead of me
thinking of Jesus, or me thinking of myself, it was me thinking of Jesus
thinking of me.

Maybe others do it all the time
and I am just weird, but this was a whole new viewpoint for me.I was taken aback, because suddenly I was
faced with a scenario that I’d never been confronted with before, not in this
context.No longer was I the guilty man
staring at the innocent one; I was the innocent man, staring at the guilty one.

This forced me to reflect upon my
idea of compassion, and the extent of my charity and love of others.

It is very easy to feel
compassion for the unjustly condemned.We see people affected by an earthquake, a hurricane, cancer, some
natural disaster that they could never have brought upon themselves, and we
want to help them.Who among us would
not weep to find that a man put on death row for murder had been framed, and
was totally innocent?It is natural and
easy to help innocent people unjustly condemned.Not so for the justly condemned.

Not very long ago, there was a
man who beat a two year old to death.It
was on the news, and naturally it was on facebook.So many statuses and comments I read, even
those of church-going, highly-involved, Catholic adults, ranted.“He is evil,” they said.

“He should be beaten.”

“He should get the death penalty.”

A great many ill-wishes were
brought upon him.Not once did I see a
suggestion of prayer for the man, a request for his conversion, an expressed
desire to see him in heaven instead of in prison or in a grave.

It is hard to refrain from
condemning the justly condemned.

I once invited a drug addict to
hang out with me and my friends.I knew
that he could change. I knew that there were not many people in his life who
would encourage him to do so.I thought
to myself, “If the only thing keeping him from heaven is a lack of good
influence in his life, then I am certainly not going to deprive him of such an
influence.”I knew all this.But he was so rough, had so many problems,
had gotten himself into so much trouble, and was just so not the kind of person
that I usually hung out with that it was incredibly difficult to invite him
along with us.I did not want to be seen
in public with him.I did not enjoy
having him along.

Another time, I brought a
roadside beggar and his girlfriend to eat at a restaurant with me.I sat across from them and talked with them
as they ate.The guy spent the next
thirty minutes complaining about all his problems.I obviously won’t go into detail about what
they were, but I will say that they were all “his fault”.He was one of those young, naïve, rebellious
kids (he was just a kid, little older than myself) who makes stupid decisions
and gets into trouble.It was very
difficult not to think this as I listened to him talk.When they finished eating, I left.You know that good feeling you get when you
help someone?Well, I didn’t have
it.

It is so difficult to feel
sympathy for people who appear to deserve their situation.It is so easy to condemn the condemnable, to
say, “It’s your problem, you fix it.You
got yourself into this mess, you can get yourself out of it.”It is terribly difficult to help someone who
doesn’t realize they need help, to sacrifice yourself, your time and money and
emotion and effort, for something that was 100% preventable, for someone who
won’t appreciate it.

We hear all the time about Saint
Jude’s, children’s shelters, Food for the Poor.Most of us probably give to organizations like these on a semi-regular
basis.But who donates to AA?*Visit a nursing home, sure, but a
prison?A drug rehabilitation
center?As proven above, I am not a good,
sympathetic person.Maybe people do this
all the time, and I just don’t hear about it because it is the last thing on my
mind.I don’t want to help the justly
condemned.I’m not at all like Christ.

I think I need to look at Him
looking at me a bit more often than I do.

*If you are like me, you didn't even know that AA doesn't accept donations.